


Arrow into the Air

by quiet__tiger



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alien!Clark, Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 11:03:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10852653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiet__tiger/pseuds/quiet__tiger
Summary: Actions have consequences.





	Arrow into the Air

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Odyssey. Technically slightly AU.
> 
> Originally posted to Livejournal Oct. 5th, 2008.

Almost as soon as he released the second arrow, Oliver wondered what in the hell he had just done. There was so much blood on Clark’s chest, soaking into his shirt.

And it was his fault.

His friend stared at him with shocked, pained eyes, seeming to wonder, “How could you?” as much as he must be thinking, “This hurts like hell.”

Oliver ran to him to try to do something, try to stop the blood, try to fix Clark’s heart, but there was nothing he could do. He knew he couldn’t possibly be in as much pain as Clark was, but there was an ache in his chest just the same.

The suffering was magnified in Clark’s green eyes, as was the utter confusion visible in them. He could almost hear Clark asking him “Why?” Oliver would welcome the horrible question he couldn’t answer if it meant his friend was breathing for another minute.

Then he spasmed, and Oliver knew it was over.

As Clark stopped breathing, so did Oliver.

And he almost didn’t want to start again.

~*~

The arrow through Clark’s chest was nothing compared to this one through his heart. Pain unlike anything he’d known before surged through him, and blood poured out of him, soaking through his shirt.

He couldn’t stay on his feet, and the floor was hard when he landed on it.

So much pain. And it was caused by his friend, his fellow hero.

And here the archer was now, looking horrified, lost, brown eyes projecting a mix of panic and grief.

And then Chloe was there, and Oliver was trying to stop the blood, trying to save him. And Chloe tried her healing power.

But there was nothing to do. He was dying.

As if in confirmation, his life passed before his eyes. Lana. His parents and the farm. 

He choked through one more breath and the darkness finally overwhelmed him, but not before the final vision, that of the Martian Manhunter, passed through his head.

~*~

Lex was painstakingly trying to scale a fish with frostbitten fingers when a searing pain ripped through his chest. He fell to the snowy ground, gasping as he cried out in agony. The Inuit family who’d found him and taken him in rushed around, but there was nothing they could do as he writhed.

_What the fuck?_

And then it hit him.

Fucking alien bonding all those years ago. Some sex that wasn’t even that good, and then he and Clark still couldn’t get it together, Clark hiding behind more lies and secrets related to his heritage, and him trusting Lex less and less and less...

Clark couldn’t get hurt, but somehow he had, somehow he was dying, and now Lex was, too. He wondered if it would happen one day, if the bonding was truly completed, that if one of them died, the other did, too. He’d always been wary of he and Clark killing each other, but he hadn’t let himself believe it would happen like this.

And there was no one to help him, no medical personnel of the proper caliber here, if they could even do anything in a case like this. He could feel blood pulsing hot and then cooling on his chest and back underneath his shirt.

What had happened to Clark? How had he finally been killed?

But then things started to get dark as he fought for breath, fought the agony, and he stopped thinking about Clark, focusing instead on what he’d never get to do, and a thousand smaller things of no importance.

Until finally the darkness overtook him, and he thought no more.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Longfellow poem "The Arrow and the Song." The first and last lines are:
> 
> I shot the arrow into the air/  
> I found again in the heart of a friend.
> 
> (he's referring to the song at the end, not the arrow, but, well.)


End file.
